Method, Device and Computer Storage Medium of Communication

Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to the field of telecommunication, and in particular, to methods, devices and computer storage media of communication for packet duplication in sidelink transmission.

New radio (NR) sidelink communication is an access stratum (AS) functionality enabling communication between two or more nearby user equipment (UE) using NR technology but not traversing any network node. Improving sidelink data reliability and latency is one important target, considering a safety requirement of service for vehicles in sidelink communication. Packet duplication is an efficient method to improve reliability and latency performance of sidelink transmission. However, packet duplication for sidelink transmission is still incomplete and needs to be further developed.

In general, embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, devices and computer storage media of communication for packet duplication in sidelink transmission.

In a first aspect, there is provided a method of communication. The method comprises: receiving, at a first terminal device and from a first network device, a sidelink configuration comprising a first configuration of packet duplication for at least one sidelink radio bearer; determining, at least based on the first configuration, a set of activated radio link control (RLC) entities associated with a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) entity for a sidelink radio bearer: and transmitting a set of duplications of a PDCP packet to a second terminal device via the set of activated RLC entities.

In a second aspect, there is provided a method of communication. The method comprises: receiving, at a second terminal device via a sidelink between the second terminal device and a first terminal device, a second configuration of packet duplication for at least one sidelink radio bearer; and transmitting information of the second configuration to a second network device.

In a third aspect, there is provided a method of communication. The method comprises: transmitting, at a first network device and to a first terminal device, a sidelink configuration comprising a first configuration of packet duplication for at least one sidelink radio bearer.

In a fourth aspect, there is provided a method of communication. The method comprises: receiving, at a second network device and from a second terminal device, information of a second configuration of packet duplication for at least one sidelink radio bearer; and transmitting, to the second terminal device, at least one of the following: a third configuration of packet duplication of a transmit side; or a fourth configuration of packet duplication of a receive side.

In a fifth aspect, there is provided a device of communication. The device comprises a processor configured to cause the device to perform the method according to any of the first to fourth aspects of the present disclosure.

In a sixth aspect, there is provided a computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon. The instructions, when executed on at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform the method according to any of the first to fourth aspects of the present disclosure.

Other features of the present disclosure will become easily comprehensible through the following description.

Throughout the drawings, the same or similar reference numerals represent the same or similar element.

Principle of the present disclosure will now be described with reference to some embodiments. It is to be understood that these embodiments are described only for the purpose of illustration and help those skilled in the art to understand and implement the present disclosure, without suggesting any limitations as to the scope of the disclosure. The disclosure described herein can be implemented in various manners other than the ones described below.

In the following description and claims, unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skills in the art to which this disclosure belongs.

As used herein, the term “terminal device” refers to any device having wireless or wired communication capabilities. Examples of the terminal device include, but not limited to, user equipment (UE), personal computers, desktops, mobile phones, cellular phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable computers, tablets, wearable devices, internet of things (IoT) devices, Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC) devices, Internet of Everything (IoE) devices, machine type communication (MTC) devices, device on vehicle for V2X communication where X means pedestrian, vehicle, or infrastructure/network, devices for Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), Space borne vehicles or Air borne vehicles in Non-terrestrial networks (NTN) including Satellites and High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) encompassing Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), extended Reality (XR) devices including different types of realities such as Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR), the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) commonly known as a drone which is an aircraft without any human pilot, devices on high speed train (HST), or image capture devices such as digital cameras, sensors, gaming devices, music storage and playback appliances, or Internet appliances enabling wireless or wired Internet access and browsing and the like. The ‘terminal device’ can further has ‘multicast/broadcast’ feature, to support public safety and mission critical, V2X applications, transparent IPv4/IPv6 multicast delivery, IPTV, smart TV, radio services, software delivery over wireless, group communications and IoT applications. It may also incorporate one or multiple Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) as known as Multi-SIM. The term “terminal device” can be used interchangeably with a UE, a mobile station, a subscriber station, a mobile terminal, a user terminal or a wireless device.

The term “network device” refers to a device which is capable of providing or hosting a cell or coverage where terminal devices can communicate. Examples of a network device include, but not limited to, a Node B (NodeB or NB), an evolved NodeB (eNodeB or eNB), a next generation NodeB (gNB), a transmission reception point (TRP), a remote radio unit (RRU), a radio head (RH), a remote radio head (RRH), an IAB node, a low power node such as a femto node, a pico node, a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), and the like.

The terminal device or the network device may have Artificial intelligence (AI) or Machine learning capability. It generally includes a model which has been trained from numerous collected data for a specific function, and can be used to predict some information.

The terminal or the network device may work on several frequency ranges, e.g. FRI (410 MHz to 7125 MHZ), FR2 (24.25 GHz to 71 GHz), frequency band larger than 100 GHz as well as Tera Hertz (THz). It can further work on licensed/unlicensed/shared spectrum. The terminal device may have more than one connections with the network devices under Multi-Radio Dual Connectivity (MR-DC) application scenario. The terminal device or the network device can work on full duplex, flexible duplex and cross division duplex modes.

The embodiments of the present disclosure may be performed in test equipment, e.g. signal generator, signal analyzer, spectrum analyzer, network analyzer, test terminal device, test network device, channel emulator.

In some embodiments, the terminal device may be connected with a first network device and a second network device. One of the first network device and the second network device may be a master node and the other one may be a secondary node. The first network device and the second network device may use different radio access technologies (RATs). In some embodiments, the first network device may be a first RAT device and the second network device may be a second RAT device. In some embodiments, the first RAT device is eNB and the second RAT device is gNB. Information related with different RATs may be transmitted to the terminal device from at least one of the first network device or the second network device. In some embodiments, first information may be transmitted to the terminal device from the first network device and second information may be transmitted to the terminal device from the second network device directly or via the first network device. In some embodiments, information related with configuration for the terminal device configured by the second network device may be transmitted from the second network device via the first network device. Information related with reconfiguration for the terminal device configured by the second network device may be transmitted to the terminal device from the second network device directly or via the first network device.

As used herein, the singular forms ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The term ‘includes’ and its variants are to be read as open terms that mean ‘includes, but is not limited to.’ The term ‘based on’ is to be read as ‘at least in part based on.’ The term ‘one embodiment’ and ‘an embodiment’ are to be read as ‘at least one embodiment.’ The term ‘another embodiment’ is to be read as ‘at least one other embodiment.’ The terms ‘first,’ ‘second,’ and the like may refer to different or same objects. Other definitions, explicit and implicit, may be included below.

In some examples, values, procedures, or apparatus are referred to as ‘best,’ ‘lowest,’ ‘highest,’ ‘minimum,’ ‘maximum,’ or the like. It will be appreciated that such descriptions are intended to indicate that a selection among many used functional alternatives can be made, and such selections need not be better, smaller, higher, or otherwise preferable to other selections.

In the context of the present disclosure, the term “packet duplication” may be interchangeably used with “PDCP duplication” or “PDCP packet duplication”. The term “carrier” may also be called as “cell” or “serving cell”.

Generally, increased sidelink data rate is motivated by applications such as sensor information (e.g., video) sharing between vehicles with high degree of driving automation. Commercial use cases could require data rates in excess of what is possible. Increased data rate may be achieved with support of sidelink carrier aggregation. Meanwhile, improving sidelink data reliability and latency is also one important target, considering a safety requirement of service for vehicles. Packet duplication is an efficient method to improve reliability and latency performance of sidelink transmission.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a solution of communication to support packet duplication for sidelink transmission. In the solution, a first terminal device as an initiating party of sidelink communication receives a sidelink configuration comprising a configuration of packet duplication for at least one sidelink radio bearer. The first terminal device determines, at least based on the configuration, a set of activated RLC entities associated with a PDCP entity for a sidelink radio bearer, and transmits, via the set of activated RLC entities, a set of duplications of a PDCP packet to a second terminal device as a peer party of the sidelink communication. In this way, packet duplication for sidelink transmission may be well supported.

Principles and implementations of the present disclosure will be described in detail below with reference to the figures.

illustrates a schematic diagram of an example communication networkA in which some embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented. As shown in, the communication networkA may include terminal devicesandand network devicesand. The network devicesandprovide respective cellsandto serve a terminal device.

In some embodiments, the terminal deviceis located in the celland served by the network device. The terminal deviceis located in the celland served by the network device.

It is to be understood that the number of devices and cells inis given for the purpose of illustration without suggesting any limitations to the present disclosure. The communication networkA may include any suitable number of network devices and/or terminal devices and/or cells adapted for implementing implementations of the present disclosure.

In some embodiments, a terminal device (for example, the terminal deviceor) and a network device (for example, the network deviceor) may communicate with each other via a channel such as a wireless communication channel on an air interface (e.g., Uu interface). The wireless communication channel may comprise a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH), a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), a physical random-access channel (PRACH), a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) and a physical broadcast channel (PBCH). Of course, any other suitable channels are also feasible.

In some embodiments, any two of terminal devices (for example, the terminal devicesand) may communicate with each other via a sidelink channel on a sidelink interface (e.g., PC5 interface). The sidelink channel may comprise a physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH), a physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH), a physical sidelink feedback channel (PSFCH), and a physical sidelink broadcast channel (PSBCH). Of course, any other suitable channels are also feasible.

In some embodiments, the network devicesandmay be different network devices. In some embodiments, the network devicesandmay be the same network device.

In some embodiments, the terminal devicesandmay communicate with each other by means of one or multiple carriers for sidelink (not shown). In some embodiments where the terminal devicesandcommunicate with each other by means of multiple carriers for sidelink, one of the multiple carriers for sidelink may be served as a primary carrier for sidelink and the remaining one or more carriers for sidelink may be served as secondary carriers for sidelink. For example, the primary carrier may be activated all the time, and the secondary carriers may be activated as needed. For another example, the radio link monitoring for sidelink may be performed on the primary carrier.

The communications in the communication networkA may conform to any suitable standards including, but not limited to, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Evolution, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), New Radio (NR), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN), Machine Type Communication (MTC) and the like. The embodiments of the present disclosure may be performed according to any generation communication protocols either currently known or to be developed in the future. Examples of the communication protocols include, but not limited to, the first generation (1G), the second generation (2G), 2.5G, 2.75G, the third generation (3G), the fourth generation (4G), 4.5G, the fifth generation (5G) communication protocols, 5.5G, 5G-Advanced networks, or the sixth generation (6G) networks.

The communications between a terminal device and a network device in communication networkA may be performed in accordance with user plane and control plane protocol stacks. Generally speaking, for a communication device (such as a terminal device or a network device), there are a plurality of entities for a plurality of network protocol layers in a protocol stack, which can be configured to implement corresponding processing on data or signaling transmitted from the communication device and received by the communication device.illustrates a schematic diagramB illustrating network protocol layer entities that may be established for user plane protocol stack at devices according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. For illustration, the following description is given by taking the terminal deviceas an example of a terminal device and taking the network deviceas an example of a network device.

As shown in, each of the terminal deviceand the network devicemay comprise an entity for the L1 layer, i.e., an entity for a physical (PHY) layer (also referred to as a PHY entity), and one or more entities for upper layers (L2 and L3 layers, or upper layers) including an entity for a media access control (MAC) layer (also referred to as a MAC entity), an entity for a RLC layer (also referred to as a RLC entity), an entity for a PDCP layer (also referred to as a PDCP entity), and an entity for a service data application protocol (SDAP) layer (also referred to as a SDAP entity, which is established in 5G and higher-generation networks).

illustrates a schematic diagramC illustrating network protocol layer entities that may be established for control plane protocol stack at devices according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown in, each of the terminal deviceand the network devicemay comprise an entity for the L1 layer, i.e., an entity for a PHY layer (also referred to as a PHY entity), and one or more entities for upper layers (L2 and L3 layers) including an entity for a MAC layer (also referred to as a MAC entity), an entity for a RLC layer (also referred to as a RLC entity), an entity for a PDCP layer (also referred to as a PDCP entity), and an entity for a RRC layer (also referred to as a RRC entity). The RRC layer may be also referred to as an access stratum (AS) layer, and thus the RRC entity may be also referred to as an AS entity. As shown in, the terminal devicemay also comprise an entity for a non-access stratum (NAS) layer (also referred to as a NAS entity). An NAS layer at the network side is not located in a network device and is located in a core network (CN, not shown). In some cases, these entities are in a stack structure.

Generally, channels between the RRC layer and PDCP layer are called as radio bearers. A terminal device (for example, the terminal deviceor) may be configured with at least one data radio bearer (DRB) for bearing data plane data and at least one signaling radio bearer (SRB) for bearing control plane data.

The communications between terminal devices in the communication networkA may be performed in accordance with control plane protocol stacks.illustrates a schematic diagramD of a user plane protocol stack for a STCH in which some embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented. For illustration, the following description is given by taking the terminal devicesandas examples of the terminal devices.

As shown in, each of the terminal devicesandmay comprise an entity for the L1 layer, i.e., an entity for a PHY layer (also referred to as a PHY entity), and one or more entities for upper layers (L2 and L3 layers, or upper layers) including an entity for a MAC layer (also referred to as a MAC entity), an entity for a RLC layer (also referred to as a RLC entity), an entity for a PDCP layer (also referred to as a PDCP entity), and an entity for a SDAP layer (also referred to as a SDAP entity, which is established in 5G and higher-generation networks).

illustrates a schematic diagramE of a control plane protocol stack for SCCH for PC5-RRC in which some embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented. For illustration, the following description is given by taking the terminal devicesandas examples of the terminal devices.

As shown in, each of the terminal devicesandmay comprise an entity for the L1 layer, i.e., an entity for a PHY layer (also referred to as a PHY entity), and one or more entities for upper layers (L2 and L3 layers, or upper layers) including an entity for a MAC layer (also referred to as a MAC entity), an entity for a RLC layer (also referred to as a RLC entity), an entity for a PDCP layer (also referred to as a PDCP entity), and an entity for a PC5-RRC layer (also referred to as a PC5-RRC entity).

In some embodiments, a RRC entity and a PC5-RRC entity in a terminal device may be the same entity (e.g. logical entity). Of course, the RRC entity and the PC5-RRC entity may be different entities (e.g. logical entities). In some embodiments, a RRC layer and a PC5-RRC layer in a terminal device may be realized as the same layer. Of course, the RRC layer and the PC5-RRC layer may be realized as different layers.

FIG. IF illustrates a schematic diagramF illustrating a control plane protocol stack for SCCH for PC5-S in which some embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented. As shown in, each of the terminal devicesandmay comprise an entity for the L1 layer, i.e., an entity for a PHY layer (also referred to as a PHY entity), and one or more entities for upper layers (L2 and L3 layers) including an entity for a MAC layer (also referred to as a MAC entity), an entity for a RLC layer (also referred to as a RLC entity), an entity for a PDCP layer (also referred to as a PDCP entity), and an entity for a PC5-S layer (also referred to as a PC5-S entity).

Generally, a PC5-RRC layer may manage a PC5 RRC connection and a PC5-S layer may manage a PC5 unicast link. Channels between a PC5-RRC layer and PDCP layer are called as sidelink radio bearers (SL RBs). A terminal device (for example, the terminal deviceor) may be configured with at least one sidelink DRB (SL DRB) for bearing data plane data and at least one sidelink SRB (SL SRB) for bearing control plane data.

For each PC5 RRC connection of unicast, one SL SRB (e.g., SL-SRB0) is used to transmit one or more PC5-S messages before PC5-S security has been established. One SL SRB (e.g., SL-SRB1) is used to transmit one or more PC5-S messages to establish PC5-S security. One SL SRB (e.g., SL-SRB2) is used to transmit, after PC5-S security has been established, one or more PC5-S messages which are protected. One SL SRB (e.g., SL-SRB3) is used to transmit a PC5-RRC signaling which is protected and only transmit the PC5-RRC signaling after PC5-S security has been established.

illustrates a schematic diagramG of activation or deactivation of packet duplication in which some embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented. As shown in, when packet duplication is activated or configured for a terminal device (for example, the terminal device) as an initiating party of sidelink communication, a PDCP packet from a PDCP entity of the terminal devicemay be repeatedly submitted to a plurality of RLC entities (in this example, only two RLC entitiesandare shown for illustration) of the terminal devicevia respective RLC bearer or channels. The PDCP entity may be associated with a quality of service (QoS) flow. RLC entities in the plurality of RLC entities may correspond to different logical channels which have respective logical channel identities (LCIDs). The PDCP packet may be transmitted to another terminal device (for example, the terminal device) as a peer party of the sidelink communication via the logical channels. RLC entitiesandof the terminal devicemay submit received PDCP packets to a PDCP entity of the terminal deviceassociated with the QoS flow.

When packet duplication is deactivated or not configured for the terminal device, a single RLC entity (for example, the RLC entity) of the terminal devicevia a respective RLC bearer or channel. The PDCP entity may be associated with a QoS flow. The PDCP packet may be transmitted to the terminal devicevia a logical channel corresponding to the RLC entity. A RLC entityof the terminal devicemay submit a received PDCP packet to a PDCP entity of the terminal deviceassociated with the QoS flow.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a solution of communication to support packet duplication for sidelink transmission. According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, packet duplication may be applied to broadcast, groupcast and unicast of sidelink transmission. Packet duplication for sidelink transmission may be applied to a terminal device in a connected state, an inactive state and an idle state. Packet duplication may be supported for a SL DRB for user plane data and a SL SRB for control plane data. The SL SRB may be at least one of SL SRB0, SL SRB1, SL SRB2 or SL SRB3. Packet duplication with two and more than two RLC entities may be supported.

For illustration, more details of the solution will be described with reference to.

illustrates a schematic diagram illustrating a processof communication for packet duplication in sidelink transmission according to embodiments of the present disclosure. For the purpose of discussion, the processwill be described with reference to. The processmay involve the terminal devicesandand the network devicesandas illustrated in. It is assumed that the network deviceprovides a serving cell (e.g., the cell) for the terminal device. The network deviceprovides a serving cell (e.g., the cell) for the terminal device.